Waiting to Come Home
by Walker Matrix
Summary: DARK The village, the people, everything. It's all coming undone, because they wanted a demon dead.
1. Smile

Claws tear through flesh as blood splatters against the wall. Screams of agony are silenced. And all that's left is laughter.

The laugh is cold and dark, filling those who hear it with fear. The boy laughs throughout the cool night, and one can envision his appearance. Blood covering every inch of him, matting his hair, dripping down his face and into his eyes, soaking his body, his mind, to the very core.

He stands there drinking it all in, enjoying every second of it. Both him and the demon loving every copper coated second of this glorious blood filled place. Seeing raw beauty in the liquid as it drips down walls and slicks pathways through disgusting normality and safety. Finding joy as the blissful fake reality is shattered and darkened by their truth, by their salvation.

As others fall into madness they rise to power and strength living by the blood instead of fearing and dieing by it. Loving the liquid instead of drowning and dieing in it. Taking pleasure in simply watching redwine flow from open wounds and sores, leaving frail bodies to reform back into its natural, beautiful, terrible state.

Blue eyes open in annoyance, as a resounding nock awakens him from sleep. Soundlessly he stands up and walks to the door.

"Naruto!" Sakura shrieks, "You're late for training! What were you doing?"

He smiles a smile as fake as plastic, "Nothing Sakura-chan,"

He closes the door behind him as he follows her, and his thoughts shift to his dreams, he imagines himself covered in blood once again, feeling the liquid coat him in its loving embrace…

And his smile becomes genuine.


	2. Treated

He follows her through the croud pretending to be oblivious to the harsh words of the villagers. Pretending to be a weak, docile, pathetic human who had no idea of what was going on... 

_"Look, it's him! The demo--"_

_"Shush! Are you begging for punishment! If anyone hears you..."_

_"Everyone hates it as much as we do! Why don't they just kill the thing already! I can't sleep at night with it alive! Especially with the rumors going around..."_

_"So you think it was the thing that's been killing people lately?"_

_"Of course i know it was the murderer! Heaven help us it's a bloodthirsty demon! He'll kill all of us one day! Just watch!"_

He grinned, revealing his long canines. The two women visabley shuddered as he walked past him. _And you'll be the first.._

---

His teeth tore through the soft flesh of her throat, exposing her bloody shuddering windpipe. Blood flecked across his face and into his eyes, a semblence of tears as it flowed down his face. The woman stuggled weakly, managing to get her shaky hand wrapped around the neck of the now still demon in front of her. She squeezed as hard as she could, vainly hoping, _praying_ that something would happen, that the monster would die, that the demon would seize to exist, that she could just destroy the fleeting glimpse of a shunned and terrified boy that she had seen in that one moment. That one awful moment where she had relized what they had done, what _she_ had done to this poor child. A self fullfilling prophecy,

_Treated as a demon, a demon he shall become._

He lifted up a hand, brought it to his mouth and started to lick off the blood, he made a disgusted face before spitting the liquid on the ground. She had to say something, _say something! Something! _Redeem herself, bring back that boy she had seen, just for a minute, a second, a _moment_.

_"I'm sorry...So sorry.."_

She hit the ground with a dull 'thud', the demon standing there, calmly, almost happily, as if he were in a park, enjoying the breeze. His eyes were half lidded as he surveyed the destruction around him...There, a flicker in his eyes, a little jolt of inhuman pain in those ice blue eyes.. Her heart stopped, almost peacefully, her body slowly cooled. Her last wish had been granted.

"Your blood tastes nasty." He spit a pale pink stream on the ground, and wiped his hand on his pants, slowly walking away.

They didn't find the body until morning.

_Treated as a demon, a demon he shall become._


	3. Crying

He found him on top of the monument, nestled between the fourth's spikes. His instincts running on high and yelling, no _screaming_ at him to _get away before he kills you!_ He ignores them and approaches Naruto, his almost son.

"Naruto…" He lets it hang in the air, hoping _praying_ that the boy won't know what he's talking about. If he knew…. He shivered.

Naruto turns to face him, and he is disturbed by the feeling he gets by looking into those blue eyes. They once reminded him of the sky, now they look like ice, cold, uonving,_ dead_.

"They're looking forhim right?" He goes cold when he hears this, it hurts to think that _he _could do something like that. To that poor woman. He is shocked when tears fall from those unmoving eyes. He softens, good, it wasn't him then, it was _him_, and maybe _he _is still in control. That's why he's like this…

_He_ touches the tears falling from _his_ eyes, "It seems what's left of him is crying for her."

He lets confusion show on his face.

_He_ smirks at the emotion and continues, "The Naruto you knew is dead. He gave birth to a new personality."

The confusion fades as realization suddenly dawns upon him. He gasps and whips his head around to face the demon.

Yes, the _demon_, that's who he was now. There was no other explanation. If Naruto had another personality..And then Naruto..died..With the Kyubi being sealed within him…It was possible…..

"Iruka, do you know what the villagers did to him?"


	4. Iruka

Hurt. It hurts. In his chest. When he looks at them, and they look through him. Is he invisible?

He looks at himself.

He's there, so why can't anyone see him?

It feels long. Forever. Standing there. But no one looked. Not even once. Even if their eyes were on him, they were looking _past_ him. At something else. He moved around. A different spot each day. But no matter where, no one _looks_ at him.

Except at the one place. The dirty place. Where people looked with mean eyes at him. At _him_. It hurt. But it felt good. People were looking _at him_. He likes it there now. He walks through it as much as he can.

And now he's standing there still. On a different place. The street is empty now as water pours down. His head hangs low but he's smiling, happy.

People acknowledge him there, even if it hurts worse than before.

---

"It's sad isn't it, Iruka?" Stares with clouded eyes, you see the pupils are slits now

Continues, "Even when they looked at him with hate, he enjoyed it. Because people were paying attention to _him_. Letting him know he was real."

Throws his head back and laughs, you shudder, the spikes of his hair look like fox ears but you shake it away, this is the boy you knew, not the demon

He lifts up a hand and you notice how small it is, how young he still is, yet having gone through so much runs it through the mass of blonde spikes, running his fingers along his scalp.

you shudder again, because you swear, _swear_, you just saw a flash of red in that mop of yellow

"No one ever loved him.." he muses over his thoughts, smiling, you stand there and yell out that you loved him like a son, because that's what he was to you, still is to you

Turns to you "Iruka, there was a time when you too hated and ignored him. He was the embodiment of the thing that killed your parents, remember? You never forgot that." And you know he's right, there was a time when you hated him with every fiber that was you, when you would have loved to see him die, and you still would, though not as much as before

Gets up lazily, bones cracking in an almost serene manner as he moves. And you run

you run because somehow you know you're going to die, even if this is the boy you have come to love as your own, it is still the thing that killed your parents and it can kill you and you are afraid, afraid of it killing you, of him killing you because you have betrayed him by running away, that's why you're running, and it doesn't even make sense but at the same time makes perfect sense

"Iruka..." its voice is calm, behind you no matter how fast or slow you run, because to him he is exempt from the pulls of fate, he merely watches things turn out, like he's watching you when you steal a look over your shoulder

"Iruka." you try to ignore that changing tone of voice, you don't look back anymore, if you do you'll be caught, caught in his eyes, in his _mind_ and you'll never escape

"Iruka_-sensei look at me! Please look at me! Help!_" you look back because that's him, and you could never leave him behind, even if he did kill your parents, when he looks like that you would be the monster if you kept running away.

you get caught by his eyes, they pull you in and you can do nothing but shudder because it's so empty in here and the hollowness astounds you because you thought someone cared enough to give him a good memory to hold on to. Instead of all this blankness

you're suffocating in here, you need to get out, GET OUT, before you kill yourself to make the emptiness go away, it hurts so bad a deep aching that you only touched upon when your parents died.

and you're out, staring him in the face, you wrap your arms around him, pulling him into a hug, even when he starts to thrash and cut your arms and shred your skin and slowly kill you

you just stay there, hugging him, letting him kill you because you deserve to die, deserve it because even you abandoned him, left him a lone in that hell of a mind with no happy memory, just emptiness, and you think if you stay here it might make up for your betrayal and he'll have something to hang onto when everyone's gone.

yes, you deserve to die; the whole village deserves to die for what they did to him, leaving him, abandoning him, betraying him,

you all deserve to die

Iruka's body falls to the ground, what remains of it is covering him and staining his skin, he never thought he'd finally get it. But he did. And Iruka earned his retribution through it.

_Thank you Iruka,_

_For giving me,_

_My first happy memory._


	5. Fooling You

"Uzumaki Naruto, for the crimes you have committed…"

They watch as he stands there, unmoving.

"The killing of one chuunin, three civilians, and the releasing of the demon Kyubi no Yoko from his seal."

He does not protest.

"Your punishment is death."

No expression.

"I am not Uzumaki Naruto."

He is a master at this.

"Iruka thought he knew who I was.."

A master of deception.

"..But…I am just…"

"..The nameless host…of a demon that never existed.."

After all.

"You shall perish for your lies jinchuriki."

He's been fooling you.

"I am not one of the jinchuriki."

For twelve long years.

"The demon Yoko never existed."

"And so, neither did the jinchuriki Uzumaki Naruto."

He has been fooling you.

"Fox. Raven."

The two summoned Anbu grabbed hold of the nameless host and disappear in one fluid practiced motion.

---

As soon as he was gone the council grew uneasy and began talking worriedly amongst themselves.

One elderly member broke down into sobs, clutching the sides of her head as if in pain, while others simply watched her outburst, keeping a careful mask of no emotion on their faces.

"_M-my god! Wh-what if he's right! What we have done.!.."_

The tension in the room escalated as the other council members began to doubt themselves as well. Soon the entire room was filled with mutterings of shame and screams of mental pain beyond what they'd ever conceived possible before. If this continued..If this continued…If this continued….

_"Silence!"_ It was Itatane Koharu, leader of the council of elders.

She continued in a much calmer voice when the others settled down, "The jinchuriki was spouting lies. We were all there on the day the honorable fourth Hokage died There is no way that it could have been different. We all know what we saw. What could have possibly made us see different?"

They were silent.

And then, in the back, an almost silent whisper that spread fear throughout them all.

"_Genjutsu."_

---

And you never knew.


	6. Undone

How had it all gone so horribly wrong?

They were just doing their job: executing the demon, saving the village, protectiong the people of Konoha!

Did it matter if the boy was innocent? He was still a demon! Kyubi no Yoko incarnate! He was evil!

He had killed, and killed and killed! He was a monster! He was,

he was,

he was...

Sinless.

It did not matter if they had doubts, the boy was to be executed in front of the gates, cast outside to decay, denied of a resting place within the village ground.

It was all to protect their village.

But still..

The image of his slack body strung across the gates would haunt them for many a night and when the executioner's sword met with the boy's thin neck, they had to force themselves to watch, they owed him that much respect.

And that's where it all came unwraveled.

The first drops of blood hit the ground,

and the sky started spinning,

and the ground was spinning,

and they were spinning,

spinning,

spinning,

spinning.


End file.
